Saving Greek Democracy

October 4, 2013

Nikos Konstandaras

ATHENS — As news broke of the arrests of Golden Dawn’s leadership early last Saturday, many Greeks felt as though they were waking up in another country. It was not only that the long-delayed crackdown on the neo-fascist party was stunning in speed and scope; more importantly, the arrests went a long way toward restoring faith in our democratic institutions.

Greece’s economic collapse is widely blamed on systemic mismanagement, corruption and cronyism, its government criticized by populist opposition leaders as little more than the proxy of foreign creditors imposing harsh austerity on ordinary people. The economic dead end of the last six years has prompted the collapse of the two centrist parties that once shared 80 percent of the vote, spurring the rise of once-marginal political groups.

The arrest of Golden Dawn’s leaders, including 6 of its 18 members of Parliament, and the probe of the organization’s links to members of the police, was a sudden reaffirmation of the government’s will to restore order. But Greece also faces a difficult and delicate challenge: It has to protect its democracy against those who would subvert it, or face a backlash with unpredictable consequences if Golden Dawn can make the case that it is the patriotic victim of political persecution.

The government’s task will not be easy because the forces that empower Golden Dawn — popular discontent and institutions that abstain from their responsibilities — are still present.

The arrests have raised troubling issues about balancing freedom of political expression with the need for law and order. At first the media covered the incident as if all the suspects had been convicted, only to veer toward the other extreme, with many commentators seeing the conditional release of three Golden Dawn members of Parliament as possible vindication of the group. The pretrial detention of Golden Dawn’s leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, ordered early Thursday, put things into perspective: The judicial investigation will be long and complicated.

Golden Dawn’s cadres have already begun the counterattack. Members staged loud protests outside the court complex, and when the three lawmakers were released they shouted insults at journalists, pushing and kicking at some reporters. “Only bullets can stop us,” Nikos Michos, one of the three, later said.

Until last year’s elections, Golden Dawn voters numbered only a few thousand. But now the party’s popular support is growing as Greeks — once the most avid supporters of E.U. membership — have lost faith in the country’s course. A poll released shortly before the arrests showed that, in the past year alone, negative opinions of the European Union had risen to 55 percent, while support for the euro had dropped from 67 percent to 51 percent. In the same poll, Golden Dawn was projected to get 13 percent if elections were held now, making it the country’s third-strongest political party.

In this climate of suspicion, institutions appeared powerless to impose the law, and the police seemed not to care about Golden Dawn’s crimes nor its infiltration of their ranks, leading many to fear that democracy itself was being undermined by growing extremism. Neo-fascist thugs prowled the streets, attacking immigrants and members of minority groups, while their leaders in Parliament carried out verbal assaults on rival lawmakers, immigrants and minorities.

At the same time, decades of tolerance for left-wing violence has fostered a sense of lawlessness that allows the far right to claim they are reacting to the excesses of the left.

It seemed nothing could stop the slide toward greater violence. Then, on Sept. 18, a self-professed member of Golden Dawn stabbed and killed Pavlos Fyssas, a 34-year-old anti-fascist activist and rapper, in a brawl in Piraeus. His murder prompted a huge outcry. After years of inaction, the government and state authorities caught fire.

Golden Dawn’s impunity has ended. Its leaders face charges that include heading a criminal organization, murder, assault, blackmail and money laundering. People who supported the party can now see behind the anti-austerity, anti-system politics. Those who opposed the party and its racist, anti-Semitic rants are at long last encouraged that the state has acted against it.

Officials of the government and democratic institutions need to act carefully but decisively. They have to convince Golden Dawn’s voters, and others — including left-wing parties — that they are prosecuting crimes, not ideas, however abhorrent the free expression of some ideas might be. As the mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, one of the few leaders who has faced up to Golden Dawn thuggery over past years, and was physically attacked by one of the group’s Parliament members when he banned a food handout for “Greeks only,” said months ago: “We must drive them mad with the imposition of the law.”

If Golden Dawn’s prosecution is seen as legally flawed and politically motivated, the group will gain power and legitimacy. If court procedures are impeccable, if citizens can believe, at last, that the law applies to all without exception, then a group that based its power on hatred and fear will provide Greece with the greatest gift in these grim years of uncertainty: new faith in its democracy.

Nikos Konstandaras is the managing editor and a columnist at the Greek daily newspaper Kathimerini.